Nicholas Shehadie

He was the third of five children born to Hannah (née Khouri) and Michael Shehaidie, who arrived in Sydney from Lebanon in 1924, two years before Nicholas was born.

Nicholas grew up in Redfern, Sydney and attended the Cleveland St Public and later Crown St Commercial schools.

The young Shehadie embraced Sydney's sporting lifestyle and joined the Coogee Surf Club where many of the surfers were avid rugby players, Keith and Colin Windon among them.

He joined the Randwick Rugby Club and was first picked as a replacement in first grade when he was still aged fifteen.

He made his first representative appearance for New South Wales against a Combined Services side at age sixteen.

Sir Nicholas Michael Shehadie, (15 November 1926 – 11 February 2018) was a Lord Mayor of Sydney (1973–1975) and national representative rugby union captain, who made thirty career test appearances for Australia between 1947 and 1958.

In 1947 he appeared in a New South Wales XV against New Zealand and then made his debut for Australia in the final Test against those same touring All Blacks.

He was selected on the 1947–48 Wallaby tour, the fourth youngest of the 30-man squad.

He dislocated his shoulder in the fourth tour match against Cardiff but recovered to make 24 tour appearances including the final two Tests against England and France.

He finished the tour in the Wallabies side that met the Barbarians in their inaugural match against an international touring team.

Shehadie made representative appearances against the New Zealand Māori in 1949 and that year toured New Zealand in Trevor Allan's team which for the first time in history returned victorious with the Bledisloe Cup.

He made further representative showings against the British and Irish Lions in 1950, the All Blacks in 1951 and Fiji in 1952.

Shehadie worked in the 1950s selling fire doors and securities systems for Wormald Industries and later became a sales manager with an asphalt company.

When his footballing days ended he commenced a business supplying and fixing vinyl tiles used in hotel bars and in computer room installations requiring anti-static floors.

The business was successful, being first to market with a product in high demand by the growing information technology departments of corporate Australia.

He made his second tour of New Zealand in 1952 and then on the 1953 Wallaby tour of South Africa he was honoured with the Australian captaincy in eight tour matches and in one Test.

He continued to represent at the highest level from 1954 to 1956 and then in 1957 he made history as the first Wallaby to repeat a tour of the British Isles and Europe.

While he played in 24 matches of the trip including two Tests, the tour was a disappointment with the Wallabies losing all five Tests.

Shehadie was signally honoured however when he became the first tourist to be asked to play for the Barbarians in the final tour match against his own team.

All up, Shehadie made 175 appearances for Randwick in a 16-year club career.

He represented for Australia on 114 occasions – the first player to reach the century mark.

He played 30 Tests – a record at the time – 3 of them as captain.

Shehadie's career in public office commenced in 1962 when he stood as an alderman for the council elections of the City of Sydney.

He ran on a ticket with the Civic Reform Association, a non-aligned ratepayers' association.

He was elected and then served a second term from 1966.

When city council boundaries were changed in 1967, his ward moved into the South Sydney precinct and he and his fellow councillors were dismissed overnight.

In the next election of 1969 he stood again and was chosen as Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney.

He was instrumental in an administration that presided over the development of Martin Place including its beautification and closure to traffic.

This leadership also pioneered a system enabling the transfer by sale of city building site ratios whereby owners of historic buildings would no longer be penalised because they weren't able to develop the building.

He officiated at visits by Charles, Prince of Wales in 1972 and by Anne, Princess Royal in 1974.

He was in office during the Green Bans when the New South Wales Builders' Labourers Federation led a campaign to protect the built and natural environment of Sydney's Woolloomooloo area from excessive development.

In 1973 he was elected as Lord Mayor of Sydney.

He was in office at the time of the opening of the Sydney Opera House by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973.

In 1973 Shehadie stood for Liberal Party preselection for the seat of Parramatta with the support of future prime minister John Howard, losing by one vote to Philip Ruddock.

The party head office favoured Shehadie, and this was the first "significant pre-selection" in which the favoured candidate did not win.

He was President of the Australia Rugby Union from 1980 to 1987; in that role he pushed for and succeeded in persuading the International Rugby Board to launch the Rugby World Cup.

He is an inductee into both the Australian Rugby Union Hall of Fame and the IRB Hall of Fame.

Nicholas Michael Shehadie was born to a Lebanese Greek Orthodox family in the beachside Sydney suburb of Coogee.

Shehadie was appointed as Chairman of the Special Broadcasting Service in 1981, and served that organisation until 1999.

SBS is a government-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network, chartered to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that reflect Australia's multicultural society.